xendistar.co.uk

For once I have something good to say about the Monday night weigh-in, last night I reached a milestone that has been long overdue, I broke the 16 stone mark, 16st 12.5lb to be exact, a loss of 5lbs. I was expecting a loss but not that much, the down side I have now is I have to ensure that I stay on the straight and narrow this week so I don’t put weight on this week and lose the gain I have had (which is what I am prone to do after a big weight loss. I guess making a pig of myself last night was not the best idea then, at least I have a week to work it off.

I have just swapped the rear wheel over from the Cannondale to the Whyte (fortunately they are both Mavic 717 rims with Hope Pro2 hubs). To be honest the Whyte wheel is not looking to good, I found a another broken spoke (a third) and this one had broken the shoulder off the nipple, it was still stuck in the hole in the rim and it was only when I was checking each spoke that it came away in my hand. Several other spokes felt loose but that maybe because the wheel is out of true, have to wait till see what the LBS says.

In my very infrequent “what dead animal have you seen when riding” column, on Sunday I saw a dead Otter, to be honest I have never seen a live Otter in the wild only in zoo etc. It was at Parley Cross roads a busy local junction, about half a mile from the river. It had obviously had been run over and either crawled of was picked up and dropped onto the grass verge. To be honest I did not know that we had Otters in the area.

Finally another picture from my gallery

Kite buggy racing at Westward Ho!

If breaking the home computer last weekend was not enough and breaking the Canondale the weekend before, I have broken the Whyte this weekend. I fitted a new chain (Sram PC971) on Saturday morning ready for another ride with Dorset Rough Rider. The chain had just reached the .75 mark on my Park Tool chain checker. With the chain changed, everything seemed ok on the bike stand so I loaded the bike on to the car I set off to the meeting point. No sooner were we off down the Castleman Trail towards Delph woods and I noticed that putting any pressure on the pedals was causing the chain to jump. I am not sure why as I put a new cassette (Sram PG990) on the bike at the last chain change because I had overlooked the chain wear and when I did check it was beyond 1% and a new chain was skipping on the cassette. I carried on with the ride choosing lower gears rather than pushing a higher gear hoping that the problem is only a minor mismatch and the chain will bed in. It seems to have improved but if I try to push a higher gear up hill it will try and skip.

Despite the chain problems yesterday ride was very good, plenty of new areas (to me) were ridden and when it came to the hills I was able to hold my own on most of them, towards the end I was at the back but I was not miles behind. By the time we got back to the starting point my legs were feeling it but I had pedalled 17 miles in a group which meant it was a faster pace than I would of ridden at on my own.

This mornings ride was a normal Sunday Throop loop, unfortunately I was only a mile or so into it when problems struck. The rear brake was rubbing so I stopped to adjust the calliper when I noticed not one but two broken spokes. I can only assume that I broke them on yesterdays ride at some point and failed to notice them when I got home last night. Fortunately the wheel was still running pretty much true so I opted to carry on with the ride and take each part as it came. I avoided as many of the bumps and roots as I could and managed about 75% when I caught the edge of a root with the back wheel which made a lovely twangy noise which had me thinking I had broken another spoke or two, I decided that I won’t push my luck any further and headed for home. So currently both bikes are off the road and little chance to get them sorted until the end of the month.

To continue my theme of breakages, I seemed to have broken my credit card, I had to get some fuel for the company car, I inadvertently gave the cashier my personal credit card rather my company credit card and then wondered why it would not accept the (company credit card) pin number, I only realised when the cashier said because of all the failed attempts my card was now blocked. I phoned the credit card company up and apparently there is a password on my account now since I had the fraud earlier in the year, I don’t remember setting one for being asked for a password and I certainly have not received any notification of one being set to me. Unfortunately they can’t tell me what it is (which is fair enough) or do anything to my account until I give them the password. The only way to get the password changed is to write a letter (as in snail mail) to credit card company and ask them to reset it. Not overly impressed to be honest.

Tomorrow is weigh in night, not to sure what to expect this week, I think I have been good but don’t want to get my hopes up only for the scales to tell a different story………………

Now continuing my infrequent dip into my gallery, here another picture for you

Two kite buggies on an alien planet

There plenty more photos in my gallery (click the link)

That the sort of day I have had today, alarm went of this morning and I was wide awake, so rather than have a lie in I got up and had breakfast. Tried my hand at a couple of competition on the radio but did not win much to my son disappointment, he thinks by entering you automatically win.

It was then time to get the Whyte out the shed and and start chasing the creak that has been bugging my rides for the past few weeks. Decided to take all the suspension links off and clean and grease the bearings and reassemble. I also ended up removing the crank and cleaned and re-greased the bottom bracket bearings as well as the front wheel bearing (noticed a little rust mark on the hub by the axle, turned out is was from the retaining spring washer and not the bearings). A quick ride round the block and the ride was silent so hopefully the creak has been resolved.

Once the bike was put away and the mound of tools that had made there way out of the shed were returned to the toolbox it was time to tackle the creeping bramble bush. I noticed earlier in the week a few new shoots of brambles popping up in the garden. Closer inspection revealed a long tentacle like branch had made its way through the garden rubbish pile and was slowly creeping its way across the garden, putting down new roots every few feet. So it was on with the thick leather gloves and out with the gardening fork for a bit of bramble removal. I upset a slow worm in the process, thought at first I had killed it but as I tried to pick it up it slithered in to the grass and disappeared. Eventually removed about 20ft of bramble tentacles from the garden ensuring I got as much of there roots as I could.

When we first moved in I spent a year long battle reclaiming the garden which had returned to a wild overgrown natural state. Now apart from one small corner where the rubbish pile is, the garden has been de-brambled and I am not about to let the brambles get a foot hold in the garden again, one day I will get the final corner cleared and rid the garden of brambles for good.

Tonight’s task is to plan my rides for the next three days.

Why can’t life be simple, if it can happen it happens to this family, don’t know why it just does. It has been a bit of a roller coaster week with a few surprises and even more surprising outcomes and to be perfectly honest at the end of the week we are in exactly the same spot we started the week, just a bit more harassed and wiser. Unfortunately I can not elaborate on what has gone on.

Due to one thing and another I never got out for an evening ride this past week so this morning ride was my first since last weekend. While I had planned to go riding today I had not decided where, when I went to bed last night I had decided on the local heath but when I got up this morning I felt I wanted to ride some where new. I remembered seeing a route on bikely web site which showed a route down to the local beach. After a quick search I found the route and downloaded it. Unfortunately it was part of a bigger route so I chopped out the section of the route I did not want and left just the section to the beach and back and then uploaded it to my GPS. I was interested in this route for two reason, one it used a couple of new section of areas that I already ride and secondly I was interested in how much of an off road ride there was to the beach. The route was not a direct route from A to B but more of a direct-ish route using all the available off road sections in between home and the beach. It turned out that from my house to the beach, along the promenade and back through Bournemouth town centre and out through Meyrick Park to the point where I crossed my outward path near Bournemouth University was 7.5miles. I guess 50% of that was off road (a mix of heathland track, path through woodland and gravel paths). At this point I decide I still wanted to do a bit more riding so I continued along the road to the local heath and took a loop around the heath and then home. Checking the GPS at home showed 18.9 mile ridden. Nothing spectacular, but interesting none the less.

While out riding this morning I pasted two new cycling attraction currently under construction but close to opening, one is the new Bournemouth cycle track at Slades Farm and the other was new cycle shop opening on the premises of an old cycle shop that closed towards the end of last year in Wallisdown.

A rather mixed lot I think you will agree, so from the top, childless, dear son is off on a school residential for four days, left for school normal time on Friday morning and is not due back until Monday end of school. It is his first time away from home where he is not staying with relatives and he can’t contact us and we can’t contact him. The peace in the house is deafening!!

Bad ankle, I have what the doctor called an inflamed tendon in the back of my ankle. If you have ever suffered from tendinitis in your wrist then you know what it is like except mine is in my ankle. I normally take Ibuprofen for it and it is normally gone within 3 or 4 days. Well it started last weekend and eased of during the week until yesterday when I decided I would walk from and to the garage when I took the car in for a service. By the time I got back home last night my ankle was screaming, this did not bode well as I was supposed to be taking the wife to Esher in Surrey on Saturday for a Bead Show. I hobbled around Sainsbury doing the weekly shop (which was quicker as dear son was not with us) and then it was home to rest my ankle.

Before heading off to the bead fair I had to get the Cannondale over to CycleFix to have the crank and bottom bearing removed the bottom bracket faced ready for new bearings. As I was changing to a different type of crank and bearings there was no point in me buying the tools to remove the old bits so I opted for Cycle Fix to do the job. As I was resting my ankle last night I had to remove the chain and pedals from the bike first thing this morning. Getting the bike ready was quite a quick job even under the deep red sky this morning. With the bits removed and the bike locked in the bike rack on the car it was time for breakfast. An hour later we were sat outside the bike shop waiting for them to open so I could drop the bike off and head for Surrey, about a 2hr journey.

We left the shop shortly after 9am and arrived at Sandown Race course just on 11am. Parking in the car park I was faced with a stiff uphill walk to the main entrance and every step hurt like hell. Now you may be wondering why I am going to a bead show, it is simple. I have dragged the wife around to various days out in the past where she has had little interest but has duly come along. Well now it was my turn, the wife is interested in beaded jewellery and it was my duty to ensure that she attended this show, that not quite how the wife worded it to me, unfortunately I can’t repeat what she said to me for fear of this blog being censored…….

After resting my ankle for a few minutes I was able to walk around the show reasonably comfortably, neither of us had ever been to one of these show so were were not sure what to expect, I guess there must have been around 50 stalls, many of them selling the same as each other but several with some unique beads. I did what many other husbands were doing just walking past the stalls scanning the contents and then standing back and letting the wife’s do the closer inspections. After one tour round the hall we had refreshment in the cafeteria, the wife announced that she only wanted to go back to two stalls to purchase some beads which I thought was pretty good as I was considering staying in the cafeteria while the wife went around the hall again on her own. Having purchased the beads we headed for the car and lunch before we headed off to the next part of the day.

Being close to Guildford we decided to pop into Evans Cycle store just to be nosey, I have to admit I was little disappointed. The store was nice and clean, but the staff outnumbered the customers and while it was big store it seemed empty, there were plenty of bikes but the accessories side of things was very scant. We only spent a few minutes in the store and then left without buying anything (not that I had intended to).

We now took a leisurely drive home via CycleFix to collect the Cannondale and boy was he busy in the shop, I have never seen so many bikes in the shop (all repairs, he does not sale bikes), apparently the good weather has got everybody thinking about riding their bikes.

Back home I had time for a cup of tea before we were back out again to visit one of my nieces poorly computer. Said computers is currently on its second virus scan having already removed a handful of nasties.

So no ride today hopefully going out tomorrow, ankle permitting